Volunteer Spotlight: Dyron Howell, Volunteer Organizer, Snack Pak 4 Kids, Amarillo, TX
The USDA reports that nearly one in four children in the United States are living in a food insecure household or a household where members are unable “to consistently access the adequate amount of nutritious food necessary for a healthy life." Households with children experience food insecurity at significantly higher rates than the population in general: 21.3% of households with children are characterized as food insecure versus 14.7% of all households.
Snack Pak 4 Kids (SP4K) is a weekend backpack program that serves over 2800 students in nine Texas Panhandle school districts. Volunteers pack 10-12 nutritious snacks in plastic bags, deliver them to the school, and place them in backpacks to be discreetly sent home each Friday.
Today, our spotlight shines on Dyron Howell, who uses VolunterSpot's online signup sheets to organize volunteers for the Snack Pak 4 Kids program in Amarillo, TX. Every other week over 170 volunteers pack 10-12 nutritious snacks in plastic bags, deliver them to the school, and place them in backpacks to be discreetly sent home each Friday.
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How did you get involved with Snack Pak 4 Kids?
In 2010, I discovered that Amarillo was the largest city west of Dallas without a weekend backpack program. My wife and I started a program out of our home, serving ten children at Will Rogers Elementary on Labor Day weekend, 2010. We now serve about 2800 kids each weekend in nine school districts on 50 campuses around our community.
How do you identify the chidren who are in need?
The targeted students are those who live in food-insecure homes as identified by the school staff (counselor, nurse, principal, and teachers). SP4K provides a bag for each elementary student (as well as any siblings at home not old enough to attend school).
How did you find out about VolunteerSpot?
Our website designer heard about it and suggested we give it a try. We used it on a small scale at first to make sure it fit our needs. In the fall we will be expanding it to all of our volunteers.
Why did you decide to use it for this program?
We managed 3000 volunteers this year, and our needs are complex, so we we need to make it easy for our organizers and volunteers. VolunteerSpot helped in both cases. We are also partnering with the Junior League, who will organize their volunteers to help with our program. Since we use 100% of the money we raise to purchase food for the program, we need to utilize whatever resources we can.
25% of our volunteers are over 60 so they will call in and then we can put them in the system ourselves. 40% of our volunteers are kids, who can easily sign up themselves online based on their availability, and so can the families. We learned through our pilot which groups can signup online. It's a huge resource, and frees us from having to hire another person to do that job.
What has been the reaction to Snack Pak 4 Kids?
Recently we started our annual survey with teachers and kids about Snack Pak 4 Kids. Here are some early comments from kids at one school about how Snack Pak makes them feel:
"It make me feel relieved because I know I don't have to worry about lack of food."
" It makes me feel loved because I don't get lots of snacks.'
"I love it because we don't have enough food."
" It makes me feel happy and like someone cares like my parents care for me."
"I feel happy because I will have food to eat over the weekend because my mom doesn't have enough money to buy food."
"Happy because we don't need to starve again.
"It makes me feel happy because we don't have to die of hungryness."
Recently we did an essay and art project at some of elementary schools and asked the question "What does hunger feel like?" Visit HERE to read some of their stories. These stories are why I volunteer in schools and started this program. No child should be able to write these stories in a country where we are so blessed.
How can others start a program like this in their community?
Contact us through the website, and we'll show you how to get started.
Do you have any advice for other community leaders out there?
There are different financial levels within each community, so kids in every school need help, not only in certain schools. Many non-profits foget the reason why they are in existance in the first place. We rally around that. When people ask how they can help, I ask "What are you good at? What is your gift?" That's where I plug them in to the program...doing something they're already good, vs one size fits all. For example...in our community, there are four businesses owned by one group. They know about our program, and wanted to help. Recently, they hosted a golf tournament to benefit our organization, and took care of everything.
I hope when others learn about the program, they will start programs in their own community, using our program as a template. There are some fundamental elements that need to be done to make this happen, like developing partnerships with schools, and finding a group of donors who believe in this. We hope to be a one stop shop for others to help them get started.
To learn more about Snack Pak 4 Kids, visit their website or facebook page, or read this Article about the program.
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We salute Dyron, Snack Pak 4 Kids, and all the other volunteer leaders and community groups out there making a difference. If you're using VolunteerSpot, write and tell us about what you're doing and give us a chance to shine our Volunteer Spotlight on you!! Just email us at VS@volunteerspot.com.
